halfway happy

All The Would That I’d Loved: Fic where Mike, Lucas, and Dustin try to figure out who Will's crush is. Linked here.

There is Still Time (WIP): Mike stays in Hawkins while the rest of the party leaves. He spends a long time figuring things out and having important conversations before finally deciding to leave and travel the world, all before making his way back to Will. Linked here.

I don’t know how offensive what I’m about to say is, but I genuinely don’t understand how people are able to write so much in a short period of time. I recently made a post where I was talking about how every byler fic now has chapters and word counts that are SO long but written within the span of a month. I chalked it up to just very passionate people, but with the recent super soaker drama on twitter, I can’t help but be suspicious of all the fanfic I read and if it’s AI or not.

Obviously, people can pre-write. I know many do this — I did the first three chapters of my fanfic. But the sheer amount of fanfics that I see written and finished within a month and are over a 100K words is so crazy to me!! I’ve been in fandom long enough to know that something like that isn’t normal. Even in 2020 when people had so much time to write, fics didn’t get this long this fast. And idk maybe people can genuinely just write that quickly, I don’t want to accuse writers of anything, but it’s also okay to take your time with this.

It’s okay to sit with your characters, to take time to think about their characterization, to make playlists and Pinterest boards and ten thousand planning documents. And I know that sometimes it can be annoying to just write, especially when you know every single thing that’s going to happen in your fic (like I do). But that’s part of the writing process! There’s so many moments where I just cannot write because I don’t know what a character would do or react in a situation, but being able to sit with it and take time with writing makes you so much of a better writer with new ideas.

Chapters: 4/24 Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson & Lucas Sinclair, Dustin Henderson & Maxine "Max" Mayfield & Lucas Sinclair, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Dustin Henderson & Lucas Sinclair, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Steve Harrington & The Party, Jonathan Byers & Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler Characters: Mike Wheeler, Will Byers, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Eleven | Jane Hopper, Henry Creel | One | Vecna, Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers, Steve Harrington, Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers, Sam Owens (Stranger Things), Holly Wheeler Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Will Byers is Never Found, Cliff Scene | Mike Wheeler Jumps Off the Cliff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Character Death, The Party Friendship (Stranger Things), Stranger Things 4, Stranger Things 5, Artist Will Byers, Writer Mike Wheeler, Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rewrite, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Will Byers Haunts the Narrative, Will Byers/Mike Wheeler in Love, Slow Burn, The Upside Down (Stranger Things), Dimension X (Stranger Things), Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Mike Wheeler Haunts the Narrative, Weird Plot Shit, Weird Time Shit, Plot Twists, 3 to be exact!!! Summary:

It hadn’t even been 24 hours between the time that the bodies of Will Byers and Mike Wheeler were pulled out of Sattler’s Quarry. Just like that, the search parties commenced, funerals were planned, and the town mourned – ruminating on the loss of two young boys. Whispers made their way around the town and down the streets. Eventually, the rumors die down, and the town forgets. Most of the town.

Three years later, everything changes.

or